Sergey Shchegolev worked at Yasnaya Polyana from 1929 till his death in 1946. In 1942 – 1946 he was the Chief Curator of the museum. He played an enormous role in saving Yasnaya Polyana from the seemingly inevitable destruction during the Nazi occupation.

It was Shchegolev who prepared the objects from the Tolstoy House for the evacuation to Tomsk. He stayed at Yasnaya Polyana during all the 47 days of the occupation and he kept a diary, in which he described all that was going on at the estate. On December 14, 1941, the last day of the occupation, Shchegolev and his sister Maria (who worked at the museum as a tour-guide) were the first to notice the fire in the Tolstoy House, set by the Nazis before their retreat. It helped to quickly extinguish the fire. The next day Soviet troops entered Yasnaya Polyana. On May 15, 1945 the memorial objects returned to the estate and they were soon on display again in the Tolstoy House.